It's not sex or marriage topic. Perhaps the mods will move this to other sub-forum.

I think I have seen courses and education on christian authoring, writer-training. My niece is a beautiful girl with a pastor's heart and wants to be an author. I want to get her a gift which will help to move her in God's direction and help her pursue her heart's desire.

That is such a lovely gift to consider for your niece (and I'm not saying that only because I happen to be a writing coach for Christian writers--there are lots of folks with way more experience than I have).

Blogging is a great way to get into Christian writing. It gives a person a chance to see what works and what doesn't with Christian readers. It also helps a writer build an audience that then makes the author more inviting to a publishing company.

Even if she doesn't want to blog, a good writing coach could spend an hour or two on the phone with her talking about writing mission, voice, structure, and the like. She may be able to get connected with some other Christian writers as part of a writing group, as well.

TJW, if you mean some kind of correspondence course, the ones I've seen along that line are pretty useless. Getting her a good book on writing or seeing if her local college has a writing course she can sign up for would probably be more beneficial. If she has actually gotten started on writing, then a writing conference or a critique group would be very useful (the first costs money and the second doesn't).

I agree that the college is the way to go. However, she is part of a low-income family where her dad is undergoing dialysis and is looking for a kidney transplant. I will pay for couple of courses but I don't want to add to the burden of this family. She doesn't have a driver license yet. I'm going to check into financial aid at the community college local to her.

Her parents have done a magnificent job of providing a christian home and solid beatitudes for her and her sister but have had a terrible financial struggle for years. They are fraternal twins.

This family's medical tribulations have been far exceeding the norm. My other niece was born with a congenital heart defect and has had invasive surgery 3 times in her 18-year life already, and is looking forward to another needed between age 21 and 25.

Their mother has undergone bilateral radical mastectomy, followed by liver resection for metastatic cancer. She is now back at work for about the last 2 years. She is caring for her husband in end-stage renal failure.

TJW, I'm sorry she has such a hard home situation right now, and glad you are looking at practical ways to help her.

I don't know all that is out there in terms of courses. I just know that some that call themselves "writing courses" feature listening to tapes of people talking about writing and then the student taking a true/false quiz on the tape. And one course I'm thinking of like that, the tapes were recorded maybe 20 years ago, and the publishing world has changed tremendously in those years. Such things may give some understanding to someone who knows nothing at all about the subject, but there are better uses of money, IMO.

A person who wants to be a writer is best served by other practices:

(1) Read. Read extensively in the chosen genre, and do extensive reading and research on subjects of particular interest.(2) Observe. If a person wants to write fiction, knowing how people talk, interact, and so forth is crucial. Whatever the subject matter of interest, whether it is football or the lives of small-mouth bass, observation of the subject is essential.(3) Write. Write on blogs, write in a journal, write letters, and try to write for publication. Write book reviews on amazon, write down your observations of your puppy's behavior, but write.(4) Solicit feedback on your writing from people who understand writing (editors, published authors, writing professors, etc.). This can be through a writers critique group, sending your manuscript to be critiqued by an editor, a college writing class, or through other means. But at some point an aspiring author needs to have others tell her what works and what doesn't work in her writing, and then she needs to write some more. (5) Find out what is being published, and where. This may mean subscribing to a magazine for which one wishes to write, attending a writers conference, spending lots of times in bookstores and libraries, and/or getting hold of copies of writers market guides (there are several such guides, generally available for perusal but not for checkout at the library--there is a Christian writers guide, one for fiction, and so forth).

Reading books or magazines about writing can also be helpful, and some knowledge of fundamentals is very important (e.g., a would-be writer has to understand basic grammar, manuscript formatting, etc.). (I have published books, I have taught writing classes, and I have critiqued the work of beginning writers, both in critique groups and for payment. So this isn't theoretical or guesswork.)